Once, twice, thrice, we have been through it quite a few times. Find a good (let alone a great) app developer for hire and getting them to come onboard your project understanding is in itself, an ordeal. We've had plenty of bad experiences with hiring an app developer which greatly inflated their capabilities. Untested pages, broken functionalities, coding glitches, blah blah blah! Lots of things that you really really never want in your…well, whatever application you dreamt of building.

The problem with UpWork and other Freelancing Sites

UpWork created a lot of creamy hoopla after oDesk and Elance discovered the awesome potential that their merger would possibly be. We're not particularly impressed with how Upwork turned out. They have tried to protect both clients and freelancers with a lot of policies and sort, but that is not all you are actually looking for when you hire an application developer!

Most platforms like Upwork have one singular problem that is so huge, it can take away the whole essence of product development – a huge communication gap. You are essentially required to make sure that when you choose the right mobile app developer from these platforms, which are essentially more of an introductory ground between freelancer developers and clients.

Going forward, you have to deal with the freelancer on your own accord, have the patience to see through iterations and take the burden of extra hours’ of management that the programmer would extract from your project. There is a lot of monetary and non-monetary cost that you pay. In reality, the result is that what seems initially cheap can turn out to be not very cheap at all.

Even in our own experience, hiring WordPress developers for our projects has been a nightmare of epic proportions - the thing with such sites it that everybody will rate themselves as a great programmer - yet, when it comes to the end-results, the quality will leave much to be desired.

Why hiring a freelance app developer who has been pre-vetted makes sense

Sometimes, we tend to be a bit short-sighted when we look at the hourly rate associated with hiring awesome mobile app developers. In essence, sometimes, when you're on a budget, it's hard to actually justify the cost of hiring a top coder. Let's just go through a few of reasons why hiring an app developer who has been screened already makes sense.

1. You are sure they are great. When working with a new freelancer, you'll have to really understand and then take advantage of their capabilities. Truth be told, application developers on freelancing sites may tend to overinflate their knowledge, skills, and capabilities. Reviews are biased towards the freelancers and it is not unknown to perform small projects just for the sake of bumping up reviews. In reality, you'll have to do your own vetting. This is done by actually contracting a small application development project. You'll then have to test the work and then increase the scope. This is a process which takes time and precious resources.

2. Cheap is actually expensive. Not knowing who you are hiring, you might get lucky and find a good programmer. On the other hand, you may get a bitter experience like we did. Once, we had to contract more than 3 freelancers to actually get a decent result. This is besides all the hours spent trying to communicate and understand capabilities. This time, especially from managers, is very costly.

3. Top freelance iOS/Android developers hired will bring more than just great coding skills. You don't get to become a great apps developer through coding alone. When you are an excellent developer, you'll have acquired other skills. Business knowledge, User Experience, experiences in understanding and preventing problems before they occur. That's so much time saved that it can't really be quantified. We've always found that hiring excellent iOS/Android freelancers returns so much more than hiring cheap talent.

4. Missing the boat. Hiring unknown or cheap app freelancers will probably cost you a lot of time until you actually go to market. Of course, being the first to go to market and being the first mover brings about HUGE advantages which once again, are very difficult to quantify. Suffice to say, if you delay by a few months, you might find that you've missed the boat altogether.

We have been through it and we understand all of it. That is the reason, why, today, we made it a point to compile a list of 5 awesome platforms from where you can hire an app developer. These platforms have both iOS and Android developers for hire - so it's just a question of your own preference.

The name says it all – Top Talent (Toptal). Only the top 3% of all those candidates who apply, get through to become developers with Toptal. You get the best level of work in a justified budget within a hard deadline. Freelancers at Toptal, bring with themselves, unique perspectives and approaches. Chances are, you get more than what you actually paid (and hoped) for. It definitely makes more sense than working with packages of thinkers and doers, doesn’t it?

They are extremely transparent about their fees and all and have an extremely good customer-centric approach. So there would be a Toptal representative who keeps a continuous track of how your apps project is progressing and how much you are feeling good about going to Toptal at the first step. That takes away much of the project management hours which you would be burdened within your typical hired app developer.

It is more of a job marketplace having awesome app developers for hire who, companies compete to take on board. They hire from only the top 5% of people who apply to be a part of their development community. So you are definite to find out the best ones.

And yes, when they say companies compete to take programmers at Hired on board, they really mean it. In fact, they have branded themselves to be a bit more inclined towards finding developers, good companies to work with. Only senior people with a thick portfolio of diverse experience are taken in and then they are given a choice of companies who are sort of bulging the edges to hire them.

You can hire mobile and desktop application programmers on all models here: fulltime, contract, freelance to build your apps. There is enough team structure flexibility as such. The hiring process is quick, generally gets done in a few weeks. And throughout the project or the tenure for which you hire a freelancer, you are ascertained of quality work that delivers beautiful results within a set timeline.

You probably have heard of it already. Both we have used it, and people in our circle also have used it, besides the fact that we have read about a lot of people who would use Gigster again in a heartbeat to develop their apps. Apart from the superb fact that they scan and vet app developers that they hire to be on board with them, one thing worth noting is that Gigster is not much of a traditional freelance developer-client meeting ground. The way they operate is quite interesting and their process is what makes them totally worth working with them.

So for example, you have some awesome application idea that is brilliant, that you have to get in touch with the Gigster people to get a quote. A representative will give you a call to briefly (time-wise) and in detail (scope-wise), get a feel of what exactly you are looking for. Within the next 10 minutes, you get a quote in terms of estimated time and estimated development cost and mind you, both the factors are generally quite reasonable.

If you agree to all of that, a project manager is assigned to you, along with the number of freelancers who would be working on your project. So in essence, it operates as a development team extension. Now this project manager guy would be a tech geek and a great team manager. He would consult you on how your stuff can be developed in a more user-friendly manner, push the team to deliver quality within the promised deadline and ensure a healthy relationship with you.

Your bonus? You don’t have to manage the freelancers that you hired, your code build is maintained by Gigster even when they are done with your project and for a fair amount of money, they promise to keep upgrading the codes to make your application time proof.

Another trustworthy name. You get both iPhone and Android application developers for hire here, on full-time and monthly models. And that, we would say, is quite flexible. The freelancers who are assigned to your project stay exclusively dedicated to your stuff, which makes them more focused and heightens the quality with which your project is executed. All programmers who work as a member of Xteam are vetted and screened for performance superiority. They are also screened for dealing with different project hiccup scenarios before they are taken on board. This makes them more agile and better equipped to deal with unique issues that might arise when your project is being executed.

Best part – Xteamers are the power of two at the budget of one – app designers cum app developers. Bingo! They cover 8 time zones in their operations. So don’t worry about which corner of the world you are set up at. You can bring in an Xteamer, regardless.

They are more of a platform which you would come across conventionally, the only difference – you get vetted app developers who are like a real genius at what they do. Freelancers who are allowed enrollment in Crew are sourced from the only the top 5% who apply to be Crewers.

Your deal – They take your development requirements in their complete detail and find you an iOS/Android freelancer who would be best suited to execute your project. So it funnels down to you not having to rack your brains into who would be good, who would do it a little more than good and who would be the best. And they do this whole finding thing within a day’s time. Fairly quick.

Another positive – they cover you and your money really well. They have different budget deduction statements, the one we loved most was the 100% budget deduction promise in case the assigned freelancer your hired did not complete your project within the set deadline. Sweet! Well, such a promise made us believe that cases like this are non-existent in their history.

Since April of 2017, Crew has been acquired by Dribbble and will be completely sunsetted by December of 2018, however, if you're looking for an alternative, you'll find this in the form of Dribbble Hiring. One should note that Dribbble is mostly a platform for designers, rather than focused on mobile development, so would probably want to look at the other platforms, if looking specifically for finding candidates to work on applications.

While we have listed only 5, we are sure there are more platforms like the above where you can find great app developers for hire both for iOS and Android. We shall be sorting out more of this kind and getting back to you soon. Till then, march out to any one of the above 5 and get a good curator of your brilliant ideas and products. It will be worth it.

One more thing... Did you know that people who share useful stuff like this post look AWESOME too? ;-) Please leave a useful comment with your thoughts, then share this on your Facebook group(s) who would find this useful and let's reap the benefits together. Thank you for sharing and being nice!

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